33-year-old Canadian Chemist and Renowned MIT Professor Develop Sustainable Cement Making

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Today’s Highlights:

• 👨🏽‍🏫33-year-old Canadian Chemist and Renowned MIT Professor Develop Sustainable Cement Making🏭

• 📱Funding News: Captions Raises $25 million📸

33-year-old Canadian Chemist and MIT Professor Create Sublime Systems for Sustainable Cement-Making

It is without question that the need for infrastructure all around the globe constantly multiplies, and as a result, the production of select materials increases alongside it. Among the many materials required for infrastructure is cement.

The unstoppable force that is infrastructure has made cement the most widely-used substance on Earth after water. The question worth asking is, how is this impacting the environment?

The Cement Industry

The cement industry is responsible for about 8% of carbon dioxide emissions, continually warming the planet. Being cheap, strong, and durable, it is no surprise that cement has become the “best” option for concrete production.

Cement production requires the crushing of raw materials such as limestone and clay, proceeding with the mixing of said materials with iron and fly ash, and heating them all to about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit using coal.

With four billion metric tons of cement being produced each year, according to management consulting company McKinsey, cement production has worsened and will continue to worsen climate conditions, especially if a less destructive method isn’t used.

So, now, some other questions we can ask are, is there a less destructive method? Can it be done? And are there individuals, organizations, or companies trying?

The Use of Renewable Energy

As a matter of fact, there are individuals trying to make a change. A renowned MIT professor and clean tech entrepreneur, Yet-Ming Chiang, has found a way to replace the fossil-fuel-intensive conventional process of cement-making with an electrochemical solution.

Alongside Chiang is Leah Ellis, a 33-year-old Canadian chemist who, before working with Chiang, was part of a team that did battery research for Tesla. Ellis took her Ph.D. in electrochemistry and received a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship that allowed her to work with Chiang.

They first worked together at Form Energy, one of Chiang’s climate-conscious start-ups, in 2018. Previously focusing on applying renewable energy to long-duration batteries, Chiang and Ellis shifted gears and tried to find a way to use low-cost renewable energy to create carbon-intensive materials. In 2020, Chiang and Ellis formed Sublime Systems.

Sublime Systems

Chiang’s responsibilities handling his other companies led to Ellis being in charge of Sublime Systems’ research, and Ellis was made CEO.

Ellis describes Sublime Systems’ cement-making development as something equivalent to electric vehicles. Sublime Systems is doing in the cement-making process what an electric vehicle does in replacing a combustion engine with an electric motor.

Ellis’ background has made electrochemistry the focus of Sublime Systems’ production. Sublime Systems pushes the chemical reactions required to create cement using electrons. This can be done at a temperature below the boiling point of water, essentially, quite the exact opposite of the conventional fossil-driven process.

Moving Away from Fossil Fuels

Switching to electrochemistry for cement production, according to Ellis and Chiang, seems to be the most energy-efficient method, and it isn’t exclusively applicable to merely cement. They find making use of electrons to be the best way to get around fossil fuels.

Plenty of investors seem to agree, as Sublime has raised $50 million from LowerCarbon Capital, MIT venture firm The Engine, and Asia-based Siam Cement Group. Sublime has also received a couple of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program.

Chiang has admitted that decarbonizing cement production is a challenging task, as it requires numerous approaches and an abundance of testing. He believes that in the long run, however, this lowest-energy process would be the most beneficial.

Sublime is determined to develop clean cement production and create a massive impact on climate change. Sublime completed its pilot plant* at the end of 2022 and focused on quality control measures. At the moment, Ellis seeks to get Sublime’s product to partners.

Sublime hopes that it will be able to do its first construction project by the end of 2023, and has future goals of turning from a 100-ton pilot plant to a 30,000-ton-per-year demonstration plant.

*Pilot plant: A pre-commercial production system that employs new production technology and/or produces small volumes of new-technology based products

Funding News

Captions raises $25 million

AI-powered video creation app for iOS, Captions, announced its $25 million in series B funding assisted by Kleiner Perkins. Founded by Gaurav Misra in 2021, Captions acted as a niche “talking videos” camera application that allows creators to engage with the camera directly.

Friendly to casual consumers and business users, Captions has adopted AI functionalities, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM) and Nvidia’s AI Eye Contact Feature.

With a total of $40 million in funds raised, assisted by some investors including but not limited to Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and SV Angel, Misra plans to rebrand and give Captions a new look. Misra will be adding a number of new features, such as:

• AI-powered redubbing adjusted to different languages

• Human-like AI voiceovers

• AI-powered short clip production with royalty-free music

To learn more, check Captions out here!

Meme & AI-Generated Picture

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